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Tea Party Leader Says Methodist Church is the Religious Arm of Socialism

12/20/2010

In the 1980s as the television preachers began to make a big splash in the public consciousness I sat down to watch them on a regular basis to see what they were saying to gain such big audiences. I found it was not Christian faith, it was not the gospel message of the bible, what they preached was God and country, a kind of hysterical nationalism. The flag was much more prominent than the cross.

They also regularly attacked so-called mainline denominations, the Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, those churches with deep roots in this country as well as the Reformation period. I realized that these Southern Baptists and Pentecostals were creating a new form of religion in this country, not historic Christianity, but an Americanized religion worshipping not the God revealed in the scriptures but a god of commerce. These preachers were most interested in making a whole lot of money.

The attack on the mainlines has only increased over the past years as the Republican Party has adopted the religious right as it own religious expression. That means a political party is now not only rejecting the idea of separation of church and state but actually promoting a particular concept of god; it is claiming that it knows God's will over against other political perspectives. This is, of course, idolatry and heresy.

Now a leader of the Tea Party Nation, Judson Phillips, has written on his blog that the Methodist Church is little more than an arm of socialism.

When I was in Washington this past Friday, I walked by the United Methodist Building, next to the Russell Office Building. The sign in front of the United Methodist Building said, “Pass the DREAM Act.” I have a DREAM. That is, no more United Methodist Church. I grew up in the Methodist church. I left as a teenager because the Methodist Church is little more than the first Church of Karl Marx. After all, what can you say about a church that considers Hillary Clinton to be a member in good standing? Today, the Methodist Church is little more than the “religious” arm of socialism.

Let me mention two things about this: First, it used to be that the term "social welfare" was used to refer to programs such as government health care and large numbers of persons affirmed the role of government in providing social and health services within the community. Now, the right wing uses the word "socialism" for all these programs, for anything and nearly everything government does. This completely changes the earlier meaning of the term, which refers to government ownership of the means of production. Now, even Social Security is considered "socialistic" by the Tea Party and its mouthpieces in talk radio and Fox News.

Secondly, to use the word "socialist" is to seriously escalate the political discourse to the level of war, since during the Cold War the United States was militantly opposed to the socialist and Communist countries of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. To use the word socialist means that people like the Methodists should be violently wiped out of existence. One does not "compromise" with followers of Karl Marx, you destroy them with every tool of power at your disposal.

We are coming upon a time with the new congress when the Republican Party will be more and more influenced by these "Tea Party" advocates who are not interested in political compromise but in winning a total victory over those terrible socialists and followers of Karl Marx. This is what Barack Obama does not seem to realize. As a person who believes it important to sit down and reason together he does not seem to realize that all reason has left the Tea Party movement. To have a concern for the poor is Marxist according to these folks.

As for me, more power to those Marxist Methodists who stand in the historic tradition and orthodoxy of Reformation Protestantism. It is the religious right that has created false gods and adopted an attitude contrary to clear reading of the scriptures. In 2004 I wrote a piece on Opposing the Religious Right. Day before yesterday I received an email from a person in Kentucky who had just read the piece. She said that it was the religious right who elected the Tea Party candidate Rand Paul for the Senate. Their rehetoric was all over the radio stations and television leading up to the election. She was so happy to read something that criticized the religious right.

We in the mainline churches have to ourselves stand up and criticize the religious right and its false preachers who are leading astray millions of Americans. There are lots of people out there, I believe, who have given up on the church because all they hear about Christianity is the hateful and hurtful talk coming from right wing extremists. How extreme they are is demonstrated by this ridiculous talk by Judson Phillips.